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This is how much food you can get for the cost of a pack of cigarettes in Australia (50 AUD)
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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A PACK is fifty bucks!? Not a case?
Damn.
Go aus.
A black market pack is $12 and noone I know buys legal cigarettes anymore. I'd love to know how they manage to smuggle in enough to meet the demand. The firebombings are an unpleasant side effect but the government loves the tax rake.
Eh the tax on cigarettes increases every year I think it's literally $2 a smoke now, it was 1.67 when I quit.
I'm conflicted on this tax though, the money doesn't go anywhere it should. Our healthcare services should be propped up with this money because smokers are actively damaging themselves causing increased stress on the medical system, it could also be put towards harm minimisation in general not just for smoking but all sorts of addictions
But the government doesn't actually care about this issue, if you look at the stance towards vaping it's apparent that they tried this ban to prop up big tobacco considering the only 'legal' vapes on the market are manufactured by the big tobacco corporations
The other issue is this tax is severely damaging for low socioeconomic areas in Australia, who already have a high amount of smokers. Lots of places just sell cheap imported cigarettes for 20 bucks now, so that money is going to some kind of organised crime.
I just think it's a form of prohibition that's gotten out of hand, rather it should've been used to bootstrap and fund better infrastructure and policy around the issue.
I do not agree with your sentiments to vaping and Australia pandering to larger tobacco companies. Vapes are not nearly as readily available as cigarettes and the regulatory hurdles to approval are restrictive meaning that smaller companies who are not willing to obtain the certification, do not end up on the market. Nicotine content is also highly controll compared to other markets.
I believe the aim was to ban vaping overall, but they saw the wave of legal battles to get to that point and decided on this as a middle ground to save cost/effort. You could argue that putting them in pharmacies aligns them as a "health" product, which is not great...
Also, the increased cost of cigarettes is in itself a harm minimisation measure. The tax is meant to be a motivator to stop people starting or continuing smoking, independent of who they are.
I don't know what could be done better here, what would you suggest?
@[email protected] , is this correct?
not them but yes, but i doubt the grocery prices are post covid. i buy very similar (cheap shitty) products and this would be much closer to 100 aud these days